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What is Workplace Culture and Why Does it Matter?
Workplace culture is the shared values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that characterize an organization and shape the work environment. It encompasses the norms, traditions, and unwritten rules that guide interactions among employees, as well as the organization’s overall identity and ethos. It is the alignment, or lack thereof, between what leaders say and what they
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Addressing Leadership Myths
There are several ways to debunk leadership myths. By promoting any or all of these strategies, your organization can challenge the various leadership myths to be able to foster more inclusive, adaptable, and effective approaches to leadership that consider the complexity and diversity of leadership contexts, ensuring your workplace culture supports and advances an effective leadership culture.
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Leadership Myth 6: There is One Best Style or Methodology of Leadership
There is no single “best way” to lead. This belief, though attractive for its simplicity, fails to account for the complex, dynamic nature of human organizations and the diverse challenges they face. Leadership is not a one-size-fits-all phenomenon; rather, it is a multifaceted practice that requires flexibility, adaptability, and a nuanced understanding of context.
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Leadership Myth 5: Leaders Must be Fearless and Never Show Weakness
Vulnerability is often associated with weakness, however, in leadership and with teams it is a strength, contributing to trust and relationship building.
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Leadership Myth 4: Leaders are Authoritarian and Avoid Conflict
Effective leaders understand that constructive conflict can be beneficial for the growth of individuals, teams and the organization overall. They recognize that conflict can be an essential contributor to creativity and innovation. Having the skills and knowledge to manage and resolve conflict in a healthy manner is a skill leaders must acquire. Leaders who are Worldview Intelligent and bring inspiration, collaboration and the ability to work with conflict constructively build a performance oriented, healthy workplace culture, fuelled by trust and relationship, that attracts and retains the top talent.
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Leadership Myth 3: Leaders Have All the Answers
Most great leaders through time have had advisors, confidants and councils to inform their decisions. As leaders they were, and are, confident enough in themselves to surround themselves with intelligent people who think differently than they do, bringing multiple worldview perspectives to the table.
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Leadership Myth 2: Leadership is a Position
Individuals at any level of an organization or in any role can exhibit leadership qualities and make a significant impact on an organization’s ability to achieve its goals and provide motivation to others. This is where the ability to appropriately engage people and an investment in learning and development pays off, characteristics of a healthy and productive workplace culture.
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Be Strategic About Workplace Culture – It’s a Sound Investment
In most organizations, company and team culture forms organically rather than intentionally. It often carries forward historical worldviews, deep-seated patterns, and even trauma, within the company. This means that counter-productive behaviors and actions can take root and be amplified by the stories that people tell about their experiences with their managers, supervisors or direct reports,
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Leadership Myth: Leaders are Born
There is a popular and pervasive myth that leaders are born when, in fact, leadership is a set of skills that can be learned and developed.
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Where are all the Inspired Spaces
Inspired spaces – and people – are everywhere. We just need to be on the lookout for them. And, we can create inspired spaces and be inspiring ourselves.
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The Importance and Power of Presence in Hosting and Facilitating
Being present when leading, hosting or facilitating is key to accessing all of your own wisdom, experience, knowledge and powers of observation.
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Art of Participatory Leadership. Conversations or Results?
Is the Art of Participatory Leadership (AoPL), also known as the Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter (AoH), just about talking, about conversations? Is it theoretical or practical? What about actions? What about results and deliverables? These are all questions we have been asked. Sometimes, with a need to justify training dollars, whether they come
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Transforming Difficult Conversations with Worldview Intelligence
Some conversations are definitely more challenging than others. The longer they go unaddressed, the harder it is to engage them in meaningful and thoughtful ways. Worldview Intelligence offers a different language and approach that enables you to be strategic and purposeful in transforming conversations, relationships and even workplace cultures.
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Worldview Shifts-Transformations-Alignments
Very early on in our work with worldviews we discovered their transformative abilities through the conversations people engaged in, equipped with a new language that allowed for taking a step back and entering conversations through a different orientation or vantage point. The simple invitation has always been, “Perhaps you can expand your worldview just enough
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Healthy Teams, Trust and Belonging
Teams are not just how we get work done in our organizations; they are key to helping people feel part of something bigger. When people are part of a healthy team, they have a sense of belonging. Brain science tells us that humans are, and have always been, social beings which contributes to the desire
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Healthy Teams Require Solid Leadership and Trust
Every organization has teams. How well they function has a lot to do with team leadership, organizational culture and trust. Cultivating healthy teams is not just a nice thing to do, it has a profound impact on each individual, teams as a whole and their ability to achieve goals and deliver better results. In another
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Worldview Intelligence Resources To Grow Team Cohesion
All of our work involves working with or being part of teams, no matter what we are up to. It can be as simple as Kathy and Jerry as a team. We’ve been part of and led hosting teams. We always work with client based Planning Teams and we help teams work together better in
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Being Better. Doing More. Growing Team Cohesion.
Recent statistics indicate that up to 60% of work teams fail flat out in pursuit of their goals and that anywhere between 50% and 83% of workers reported suffering from burnout in the last year. These statistics are hardly hallmarks of healthy workplace cultures or teams and they certainly don’t speak well of productivity, efficiency or effectiveness.
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Disruptive for Sure… But How Liberating Could AI Also Be?
Artificial Intelligence or AI. It’s been impacting our work and lives for decades now without us paying too much attention. Recently, though, the topic has taken on a whole new life force. This is, in part, due to the wide spread accessibility of programs like ChatGPT, BingChat and Bard. Reports have been surfacing of application
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You Can’t Policy Relationships
A close friend recently shared about the ongoing tumult in their organization. It is a large organization with many departments and layers of bureaucracy. They have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on consulting support and have recently fired two high priced consultants. The results weren’t there. In the face of conflicts amongst employees in
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The Rapid Expansion of Artificial Intelligence into the Public Domain is About to Disrupt How We Live and Work in Unprecedented Ways. Are We Ready? Are You Ready?
A Worldview Intelligence Conversation Series on AI: Join us for an exploration of the impact of AI on our Global, Professional, and Personal Worldviews This new generation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be the most disruptive of any witnessed in our generation. Surpassing the evolution of the Internet and social media. More accessible than other disruptive
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Writing People Off or Finding Solidarity Across Difference?
In the prologue to his book, The Persuaders, Anand Giridharadas, writes about the war on persuasion. He says that we have been conditioned to write “other people off – assuming they (will) never change their minds or ways, dismissing them as hopelessly mired in identities they (can’t) escape, viewing those who (think) differently as needing
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A Tale of Two Companies: Two Different Approaches to Employee Recognition and Support
Where will people choose to work now and in the future? In companies where trust is high and relationships matter; where they are recognized, valued and respected. It is interesting to consider what kind of recognition helps an employee feel valued. This is a tale of two similar sized companies (more than 2500 employees) although
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The Catastrophe and Wonder of a Broken Granola Bar – Through the Eyes of a Four-Year Old
You might think this is a picture of a granola bar, ready to be eaten – and you wouldn’t be wrong. But suspend your thinking for just one moment and see this through the eyes of a four-year-old who has just figured out how to open the packaging. Through his eyes, this is a picture
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The Practical Format and Transformative Power of the 4-Day Worldview Intelligence Practitioner’s Training
Whatever is next, there was a before and there is an after and the Worldview Intelligence evolution will continue to be influenced by what happened in Paris.
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Worldview Intelligence in Its Most Basic Form
We were recently asked, “If you knew nothing about Worldview Intelligence, in its most basic form, what does it look like in practice?” There are five basic practices you can draw on to short-circuit automatic reactions to respond better.
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There Are No Perfect Systems
There are no perfect systems. Maybe there never have been. Maybe there never will be. We can bring all our individual and collective wisdom to redesigning systems and we will still encounter unintended consequences, although there will be fewer when we think in terms of systems. If a perfect system is a fantasy, what are we left with? And, what does Worldview Intelligence have to offer?
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Political Party Diversity of Candidates ≠ Diverse Representation. Here’s Why.
Political parties in Canada have been working hard to ensure diverse slates of candidates across the country and this was demonstrated in the 2015 and 2019 federal elections. However, on election day, the results were far less diverse than the slate of candidates, according to an August 2021 CBC data analysis. Identifying diverse candidates is
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Five Principles of Worldview Intelligence
Worldview Intelligence is rooted in social constructionism and relational leadership. Our worldviews are socially created through relationships, experiences and conversation. The leadership that allows us to work best with worldviews is relational. Relationship matters and must be tended to in our organizations, communities and families for learning, growth and success. (In our High-Performance Teams Model,
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The Worldview Intelligence Six Dimension Framework
The Worldview Intelligence Six Dimensions Framework is a game changer and a powerful way of understanding worldviews and worldview differences.
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Worldviews: What They Are and Why They Matter
Developing competency in Worldview Intelligence and the skill to work with worldviews in all domains can be a game changer and, for an organization, a competitive advantage.
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Charting a Path to Bridge Divides (Part 3 of 3)
We have imagined we could say, “I won’t ask anything of you that I won’t ask of myself.” Which sounds noble. But sitting with it, it is simply not true. I want to ask more of you than I ask of myself. Because no matter what we say, we are deeply attached to our worldviews and especially the ones we consider to be at the heart of our moral certainty.
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The Divides that Need Bridging (Part 2 of 3)
There is an additional complicating factor here. On November 6, 2020, historian and public commentator Heather Cox Richardson wrote that the divide in America is not about principles and values. Rather it is between people who live in a reality-based world and people who live in a fictional world. This fictional world has been created by generations of right-wing media beginning with Rush Limbaugh in the late 80’s. This divide is part of the reason it can be so challenging to see a way forward.
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The Problem With the Moral High Ground (Part 1)
Our conversations and musings have led us to consider a new possibility. What if there is another space, as Rumi wrote, out beyond you and me that does not ask either of us to compromise our personal integrity but can lift us all up to discover new views and unexpected ways to bridge the divides in expansive rather than contractive ways?
This is the curiosity. This is the invitation we want to make. It will be hard to do because it requires personal examination and illuminating hard truths. There will be many not interested in this invitation. Our hope is that there are many more who will be so together we can build the capacity to seek and find new possibilities for dialogue and ways to be together better.
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We Are Never Going Back – Moving Past Denial in 2020
We are now in the autumn of 2020 and the reality of a changed future is settling in. We are never going back. We don’t yet know what the future holds and many of us have hit a wall, feeling like we are running out of steam against a pandemic that seems never ending. And,
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The Call to Defund the Police Requires a Worldview Shift
Whether police and police departments are helpful or harmful is a worldview based on individual and collective experience that has shaped how individuals, groups and communities have come to understand their relationship with police.
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Do Organizations Have Diversity and Inclusion Wrong? Part 2
Policy doesn’t tell us how to talk about the reality of inclusion and whether it is succeeding or failing? Like many change initiatives, when it comes to implementation the sentiment is often, we want the organization to change but we don’t want any disruption that might come with this change. We certainly don’t want to have to change as individuals, especially if we believe that means we have to give up something, like status or power.
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Do We, As White People, Have Inclusion and How To Go About It All Wrong? Part 1
What if how we have been thinking about inclusion is all wrong? What if how we have been trying to do inclusion is more like a system of assimilation than the welcoming of diversity? Who is doing the including? Who is being offered inclusion? Inclusion into what and why?
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What it Takes to Shift Existing Patterns, Norms or Social Contracts (3 of 3)
No matter where we live, the degree of freedom people are claiming or are willing to exchange for societal wellbeing, protection from harm and societal order is an active debate in need of renegotiation and regeneration. What is a collective worldview that could emerge that recognizes justice and equity for all, not just for a privileged few thanks to skin colour or wealth? How can more voices actively contribute to the shaping of a new future?
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When Social Contracts No Longer Work (2 of 3)
There is an urgent need for new, constructive and explicit social contracts where leadership and law enforcement are held accountable for administering them fairly and justly. However, disrupting centuries of patterns and worldviews is not an easy thing to do. We have walked these paths before. It will take dedicated, intentional and sustained repatterning to put in place a new social contract that is explicit, accountable and just for all.
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Social Contracts Are Blowing Up (1 of 3)
The social contracts that have provided guidance for individual and collective behaviour have been falling apart for a long time now, although it feels to some as if they are suddenly blowing up. Where do we stand? Where do you stand? What are the worldview perspectives that will help carry us through this time? Will this time of chamos destroy the structures and systems that have supported racism and injustice, allowing the new to arise from the ashes? How long will it take? What role will we each play?
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In-Person Social Connectedness Matters – It Impacts Brain Health
Short-term employee efficiencies and cost savings could result in the longer-term in decreased problem-solving and judgment skills. It could lead to poorer relationships or an inability to establish relationships. We could have less ability to manage amygdala hijacks.
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Interruption or Disruption? What Worldview Shifts Will Outlast Post Covid-19 Recovery?
Here we are, not knowing what we don’t know. We can begin to identify potential disruptions and start making preliminary responses to them. But caution may also be the byword as we sort out the difference between an interruption and a disruption.
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Chaordic Leadership and Resilience During Covid-19
Covid-19 is wreaking havoc and disorientation around the world. Leadership responses during this global pandemic, and in the months to come as restrictions are eased and movement returns, will be the stuff of legend. Individual and collective actions will be studied and analyzed for decades to come. There are many leaders who have been responding
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Disruption and Innovation Sparked by Covid-19
What happens when the disruption is not intentionally introduced, but is forced upon us? What happens when that disruption is global, unpredictable, and, downright scary? This is Covid-19 and we have been impacted and disoriented individually and collectively, all around the world.
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Disorientation and Presence in the Midst of Covid-19
There is such a sense of disorientation in the air as this pandemic affects the world in a way humanity has never experienced on this global scale before. This will impact both collective and individual worldviews in ways we will only fully become aware of upon the extensive reflection we know will take place in the coming months, years and decades.
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Can We Have A Rational Discussion On Macro-Economic Policy?
We need a better, less polarized discussion about what a market-based economy could look like that encourages innovation, investment, financial reward and protects consumers, the environment and ethical businesses. Can we have that discussion?
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Artificial Divides or Not?
There is a river that runs through a county in Nova Scotia where we have been working with a client, hosting conversations about health care and community. Since day one of visiting, beginning with one-on-one interviews with community leaders, we have heard about the “east/west divide that is not really a divide”. Yet, in five
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Ability, Disability or Differently-Abled? What’s Your Worldview?
We are more and more likely to encounter people who are different from us in some way. It could be physical, sexual orientation, gender, skin color, political or cultural. Or it could be with respect to what many consider ability or disability, or what we might call differently-abled. Each of us, when we meet a
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Alignment Between Traditional Lakota Conversation Practices and Art of Hosting
Recently I (Jerry) co-hosted an Art of Hosting (AoH) training at Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa with LeMoine LaPointe. LeMoine is an elder from the Lakota Nation at Rosebud. Turtle Mountain Nation residents are mainly Ojibwa or Meti. LeMoine is a good friend and wise leader. He is an active practitioner of the Art of
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50 Years Ago Still Impacting Worldviews Today
Recently I attended a cabaret style program about the year 1966. It was a lot of fun and brought back memories of events and music. The program consisted of the performers moving back and forth between roles as news broadcasters talking about key events and singers of then popular songs. This all came to a
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Clash of Worldviews at the Heart of Cultural Conflict?
On a TV news program recently, I heard a guest suggest that what we are experiencing now in the United States (and elsewhere, I would add) is a clash of worldviews. The speaker contrasted this with the clash of civilizations that Samuel Huntington suggested we are experiencing. Samuel P. Huntington, in his 1993 article “The
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Cognitive Dissonance to Creativity
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone who had very different views on the subject you have been talking about and, as the conversations ends, they ask you to “just think about it”? Meaning, they want you to reflect on and consider their perspective. Or, maybe you said it to them. That request
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When Have Quick Fixes For Complex Issues Ever Worked?
When faced with an issue or challenge, the instinct is to problem-solve to find a quick solution. When the complexity of the problem is not fully understood, solutions created are often only designed to address a symptom of the underlying issues. Solving symptoms can lead to resolution but, far more often, the solution will fail
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The Sweet Spot Between Relational Leadership, Work and Learning for High Performance Teams
High performance teams are highly valued and often difficult to cultivate in the world of teams and team development. And to be clear, not every team needs to be a high-performance team to deliver results. However, leading edge, innovative organizations interested in attracting and retaining highly motivated employees want to encourage high performance teams, and
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Why a Healthy Workplace Culture Is a Strategic Investment
Strategic choices about the workplace and embracing a diversity of worldviews can begin at any time and is a gamechanger when it comes to recruitment and retention.
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